3 ms·

That's true, but not even half the story. The couple in question had gone around like a dozen other cake makers who were all fine with making the cake they said

by ufmace 5y ago

That's true, but not even half the story. The couple in question had gone around like a dozen other cake makers who were all fine with making the cake they said they wanted. So why sue that guy? It's pretty clear, this was never a ordinary couple looking to have a nice wedding. The point of the whole operation was to find somebody who was not sufficiently supportive of them and use the power of the state to crush them.

heavyset_go 5y ago
Rosa Parks was never an ordinary individual who didn't want to sit in the back of the bus. She was an activist who was a chapter secretary of the NAACP ten years before kicking off the Montgomery bus boycott with her actions. The day of her arrest, her NAACP chapter president E.D. Nixon encouraged her to be a plaintiff in the fight against segregation laws that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
- bnjms 5y ago
  I’m not sure that refutes the point. The couple may be activists but at the time of the event they needed to interview many places before they found what they were looking for. Maybe it’s oppressive but I believe there is a difference between forcing a sole proprietor to make a particular type of cake because they can’t say no for protected class reasons. While the fay community has been similarly oppressed I just don’t see the comparison here as clarifying so much as muddying.
- ufmace 5y ago
  This is true, as far as I know. I don't think it really means much though. Rosa Parks may have been a professional activist, but there was real and widespread oppression. Nobody had to go looking to find it. It was mandated by the state. If you have to go looking for a particular individual to "oppress" you when you've already found plenty of alternatives that work fine, maybe what you're facing isn't in the same ballpark.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    This is like saying forced labor isn't oppression because chattel slavery was worse. Segregation on the basis of individuals belonging to protected classes is illegal, the law makes it very clear. How would you feel about a "white couples only" restaurant or bakery? What about a "whites only" grocery store? Or a "whites only" mechanic? Do you feel the same way about those as you do with the "straights only" bakery? People have used their religions to give a pass to discrimination for a long time[1]. Today's scapegoat is gay and trans people, but a few decades ago it was miscegenation. People discriminated against mixed-race couples and said it was a core tenet of their religion[1]: > Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix. The ACLU has this to say about such cases of discrimination: > Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a right to discriminate in the name of religion are not new. In the 1960s, we saw objections to laws requiring integration in restaurants because of sincerely held beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit students who engaged in interracial dating. In those cases, we recognized that requiring integration was not about violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring fairness. It is no different today. There were plenty of places these people could have chosen to do business with, as well, but that doesn't really matter. [1] https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5513&context=flr https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=55... [2] https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty/using-religion-discriminate/ https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty/using-religion...
    - whiddershins 5y ago
      This baker would not have sold a cake for a gay wedding to a straight person. It was the cake, not the customer.
    - ufmace 5y ago
      In my opinion, it's not about the act of discrimination itself, but the method used to combat it. As an extreme example, I think everyone agrees that littering is bad. But how would you feel about summary execution for littering? Feels crazy extreme, right? The actual effective punishment for littering is more like people maybe frown at you a little, and maybe if you're super obnoxious about it or do it right in front of a cop, you might get a modest fine. That seems about right to me. I feel like I'm complaining that maybe we shouldn't summarily execute people for littering and everyone's coming back at me with how dare you support the evils of littering. I don't like any kind of discrimination. If everyone in town is discriminating against some group so hard that they can't go about the ordinary activities of life, that feels like something that needs to be addressed by government action. On the other hand, if one business in a medium-size city doesn't want to serve some group for some reason, and there's a dozen competitors that are fine with that group, maybe it's best to just let it slide from a legal standpoint. Maybe a local soft boycott or something like that. If you want to ratchet up the severity of the punishment for an act that is vanishingly rare and hasn't really caused anyone that much trouble, consider the possibility that you aren't the good guys anymore.
ksec 5y ago
>The point of the whole operation was to find somebody who was not sufficiently supportive of them and use the power of the state to crush them. I guess I am still not cynical enough to have thought of that. So thank you for bringing in new perspective.
ceph_ 5y ago
Are you going to be pearl clutching over Rosa Parks not just being "an ordinary" bus rider next?

by ufmace 5y ago

heavyset_go 5y ago

Rosa Parks was never an ordinary individual who didn't want to sit in the back of the bus. She was an activist who was a chapter secretary of the NAACP ten years before kicking off the Montgomery bus boycott with her actions. The day of her arrest, her NAACP chapter president E.D. Nixon encouraged her to be a plaintiff in the fight against segregation laws that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

bnjms 5y ago
I’m not sure that refutes the point. The couple may be activists but at the time of the event they needed to interview many places before they found what they were looking for. Maybe it’s oppressive but I believe there is a difference between forcing a sole proprietor to make a particular type of cake because they can’t say no for protected class reasons. While the fay community has been similarly oppressed I just don’t see the comparison here as clarifying so much as muddying.
ufmace 5y ago
This is true, as far as I know. I don't think it really means much though. Rosa Parks may have been a professional activist, but there was real and widespread oppression. Nobody had to go looking to find it. It was mandated by the state. If you have to go looking for a particular individual to "oppress" you when you've already found plenty of alternatives that work fine, maybe what you're facing isn't in the same ballpark.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  This is like saying forced labor isn't oppression because chattel slavery was worse. Segregation on the basis of individuals belonging to protected classes is illegal, the law makes it very clear. How would you feel about a "white couples only" restaurant or bakery? What about a "whites only" grocery store? Or a "whites only" mechanic? Do you feel the same way about those as you do with the "straights only" bakery? People have used their religions to give a pass to discrimination for a long time[1]. Today's scapegoat is gay and trans people, but a few decades ago it was miscegenation. People discriminated against mixed-race couples and said it was a core tenet of their religion[1]: > Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix. The ACLU has this to say about such cases of discrimination: > Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a right to discriminate in the name of religion are not new. In the 1960s, we saw objections to laws requiring integration in restaurants because of sincerely held beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit students who engaged in interracial dating. In those cases, we recognized that requiring integration was not about violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring fairness. It is no different today. There were plenty of places these people could have chosen to do business with, as well, but that doesn't really matter. [1] https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5513&context=flr https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=55... [2] https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty/using-religion-discriminate/ https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty/using-religion...
  - whiddershins 5y ago
    This baker would not have sold a cake for a gay wedding to a straight person. It was the cake, not the customer.
  - ufmace 5y ago
    In my opinion, it's not about the act of discrimination itself, but the method used to combat it. As an extreme example, I think everyone agrees that littering is bad. But how would you feel about summary execution for littering? Feels crazy extreme, right? The actual effective punishment for littering is more like people maybe frown at you a little, and maybe if you're super obnoxious about it or do it right in front of a cop, you might get a modest fine. That seems about right to me. I feel like I'm complaining that maybe we shouldn't summarily execute people for littering and everyone's coming back at me with how dare you support the evils of littering. I don't like any kind of discrimination. If everyone in town is discriminating against some group so hard that they can't go about the ordinary activities of life, that feels like something that needs to be addressed by government action. On the other hand, if one business in a medium-size city doesn't want to serve some group for some reason, and there's a dozen competitors that are fine with that group, maybe it's best to just let it slide from a legal standpoint. Maybe a local soft boycott or something like that. If you want to ratchet up the severity of the punishment for an act that is vanishingly rare and hasn't really caused anyone that much trouble, consider the possibility that you aren't the good guys anymore.

ksec 5y ago

>The point of the whole operation was to find somebody who was not sufficiently supportive of them and use the power of the state to crush them. I guess I am still not cynical enough to have thought of that. So thank you for bringing in new perspective.

ceph_ 5y ago

Are you going to be pearl clutching over Rosa Parks not just being "an ordinary" bus rider next?